Bees dying/colony collapse - Neonicotinoids

I have not done any fact checking - just passing on information I've come across that claims neonicotinoids have been identified as the chemical responsible for all the colony collapse disorder problems around the world.  

Here is a wiki article on the class of insecticides called neonicotinoids.  In the article, there is a list of products on the market that contain neonicotinoids.

Here is an online petition you can sign urging Home Depot and Lowe's to stop carrying these products.

On May 24th there will be a world wide march against Monsanto, the main producer of Roundup    I am organizing an event in our town, but this site will tell you where the nearest event to where you are.

http://www.march-against-monsanto.com

gwennifer wrote:I have not done any fact checking - just passing on information I've come across that claims neonicotinoids have been identified as the chemical responsible for all the colony collapse disorder problems around the world.  

Thanks for posting. This statement above is not true. Neonics  (neonicotinoids) and all pesticides probably play a part regarding CCD, but the true cause is unknown. I any case it is probably not one smoking gun in  CCD.

gwennifer wrote:Here is a wiki article on the class of insecticides called neonicotinoids.  In the article, there is a list of products on the market that contain neonicotinoids.

Here is an online petition you can sign urging Home Depot and Lowe's to stop carrying these products.

Here is a great site for information about pollinators and information regarding environmental hazards they face. A fabulous resource
http://www.xerces.org/

Also, if you go to the pests forum, in the stickies you will find links to a national pesticide database. Please keep in mind that all pesticides (herbicides, insecticides and fungicides) are toxic will impact any life they come in contact with.

 Please keep in mind that all pesticides (herbicides, insecticides and fungicides) are toxic will impact any life they come in contact with.

 

gwennifer wrote:I have not done any fact checking - just passing on information I've come across that claims neonicotinoids have been identified as the chemical responsible for all the colony collapse disorder problems around the world.  

Here is a wiki article on the class of insecticides called neonicotinoids.  In the article, there is a list of products on the market that contain neonicotinoids.

Here is an online petition you can sign urging Home Depot and Lowe's to stop carrying these products.

Some beekeepers are not supportive of banning neonics, because they think they'll be replaced with worse. I'm not sure, having retired before neonics came into common use. I know that many of the conventional pesticides are deadly. Even Sevin dust plastered all over home gardens will kill a lot of bees. The label forbids application on any blooming plant, but few read and follow the label, and there's no significant enforcement.

We are learning that things are a lot more complicated than we thought. We used to think that insecticides were the entire problem for bees. Herbicides were not thought to affect them at all, except that they reduced the amount of forage for the bees. And fungicides were not thought to have any impact.

But now it seems that herbicides and fungicides can also cause bee death, by interfering with the bacteria in the bees' gut that help them digest the hard shell on pollen grains.

If bees cannot digest pollen, they starve. So there are lots of answers that need to be forthcoming.

Found an interesting article this morning on the Yahoo ticker:

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/scientists-may-finally-pinpointed-whats-221000439.html

gwennifer wrote:I have not done any fact checking - just passing on information I've come across that claims neonicotinoids have been identified as the chemical responsible for all the colony collapse disorder problems around the world.  

Here is a wiki article on the class of insecticides called neonicotinoids.  In the article, there is a list of products on the market that contain neonicotinoids.

Here is an online petition you can sign urging Home Depot and Lowe's to stop carrying these products.

 The  trouble with"  WIKKI " & other social sites  is that anyone can and usually does post stuff on there ..much of it utter unsubstantiated twaddle .
 
During the course of my recently studying using a MOOC ( Massive Open Online Content ) course about " How to think better and make correct decisions " ,  I was guided to a fantastic source for checking things that have been correctly researched and examined ..... it's called the " Cochrane Library ".

It's a massive library covering zillions of subjects that have been or are being researched .

Perhaps look it up on a search engine and book mark it , for I feel that many of us will find a statement or two  out on the WWW and then use the library to see if it has any validity.

It is a technical library covering all manner of well researched things , best of all at the end of each subject researched is a plain English summary of the information with a simple conclusion .



 Not all of the EU has banned the use of nicotinoids there are four or five countries who still happily use them including the UK .
 France banned them over five years ago & are still suffering SCC ( Sudden Colony Collapse )  at the same rate apparently .
You would think that such a large landmass free of the use of nicotinoids for over five years would show a massive reduction in the SCC rates if they were a major contributor to the problem.

 One thing that has not been fully explored wrt SCC  is the nitrous oxide from car & vehicle  exhausts that are fitted with catalytic converters .
 Researchers are slowly but surely proving that this pollutant is having a much bigger say in our lives that was ever previously thought .